![]() GUITAR TO MIDI CONVERTER GENERATORAnd the guitar is a notoriously complex generator of pitch information. The problem is, it isn't that simple! Pitch-to-voltage conversion is a very, very difficult process to achieve properly, its degree of success relying totally on the accuracy with which the original note's pitch is detected in the first place. Which basically means that you can 'play' whatever sounds that synth or sampler can produce, from the guitar instead of the keyboard. It contains the circuitry that converts the pitch of the note(s) played on the guitar into voltages suitable for re-transmission in the form of MIDI data to control any MIDI synthesizer, sampler or expander connected to the GTM-6's rear panel MIDI outputs. This is the 'brain' of the Shadow system. What the pickup does in simplistic terms is transmit whatever notes are played on the guitar, down a stereo cable to the input of the 2U high, rackmounting GTM-6 module. 'That won't help the pitch-tracking,' I thought. The Shadow system I reviewed had the pickup already fitted to Shadow's own guitar - a white, Fender Strat copy whose fingerboard suffered from one or two 'dead-spots', as it happened, which caused a sustained note fretted at that particular spot to 'choke' and cut off abruptly. Fitting of the new bridge, need I say, is best carried out by someone experienced in such matters. This is intended as a replacement for the existing bridge on whatever guitar you wish to use with the GTM-6, provided it conforms to one of the two types presently available: either a Gibson or a Fender style bridge (which cover most guitars actually). Interestingly enough, the GTM-6 uses a version of Shadow's popular piezo pickup design which incorporates six small piezo crystals that form part of the string saddles of a special bridge assembly. Shadow are probably best known for their range of pickups and transducers that fit onto acoustic guitars enabling them to be amplified. Well that is certainly now a possibility with the introduction of the Shadow GTM-6 Guitar-To-MIDI Converter reviewed here. Yet most of them I bet would still prefer to be playing guitar if only they had access to the same range of sounds as their keyboard-playing counterparts. There must be thousands of synth players out there who, like me, started out on guitar but were sidetracked somewhere along the line by the attraction of synthesized sounds and consequently took up playing keyboards. ![]()
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